Posted on 06/13/2005 9:10:08 PM PDT by neverdem
Men in their 70's raced on bikes for 40 kilometers in this month's National Senior Games in Pittsburgh. A 68-year-old woman threw the discus 85 feet, and a 69-year-old man hurled the javelin nearly half the length of a football field.
Is it possible that people this age are still physically capable of putting in a full day's work at the office?
I realize I'm being impolitic. In the Social Security debate, the notion of raising the retirement age is the elephant in the room, as Robin Toner and David Rosenbaum reported in The Times on Sunday. Both liberal and conservative economists favor the change, but politicians are terrified to even mention it to voters.
Americans now feel entitled to spend nearly a third of their adult lives in retirement. Their jobs are less physically demanding than their parents' were, but they're retiring younger and typically start collecting Social Security by age 62. Most could keep working - fewer than 10 percent of people 65 to 75 are in poor health - but, like Bartleby the Scrivener, they prefer not to.
The problem isn't that Americans have gotten intrinsically lazier. They're just responding to a wonderfully intentioned system that in practice promotes greed and sloth. Social Security is widely thought of as a kumbaya program that unites Americans in caring for the elderly, but it actually creates ugly political battles among generations.
With the help of groups like AARP, the elderly have learned to fight for the right to retire earlier and get bigger benefits than the previous generation - all financed by making succeeding generations pay higher taxes than they ever did themselves.
The result is a system that burdens the young and creates perverse incentives for people to retire when they're still middle-aged. Once you've worked 35 years...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Go to hell, Tierney. Raising the retirement age isn't about being fair to the young, no matter how you try to spin it. It's about RAPING them a little longer, you liberal sonofabitch.
I don't follow what you wrote. Tierney never struck me as liberal. He seems somewhere on the right side of the political system. He's been advocating the Chilean system since starting the column in April. This is at least his third column on social security. What's wrong with raising the retirement age?
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations (i.e. The Baby Boomers) are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
Depends on just WHAT your job is. Sitting in a office, hell you can stay till you rot, if you want. Driving a semi, well thats another story. How about an 80 yr old cop trying to run down a bad guy. Would you want a 70 yr old firefighter attempting to rescue you if your house was on fire? Sitting in Congress? Well those guys already started rotting, from the top down!
"What's wrong with raising the retirement age?"
Well, I must recall a caller I heard to the Rush Limbaugh show some years ago. Her call got my attention because she was calling from my town of Bayonne, NJ on this exact subject. She made the point that her husband was some kind of blue collar laborer (I forget what he did, but it was pretty physically intense, not just a truck driver, more active than that) and while she found it easy to imagine a person with an office job working until age 70, she found it difficult to think her husband could do his job until he was that old. She, and her hubby, were in their late 50s or so.
I thought then, and still think, that she made a good point.
Raising the retirement age is just another stop-gap. Privatization, and retention of the "safety net" for the children of folks who die prematurely is the only way to go.
"...she found it easy to imagine a person with an office job working until age 70, she found it difficult to think her husband could do his job until he was that old."
I'm a courier for FedEx Express, and I cannot see doing this past 55! But that doesn't mean I would never work again, just something less strenuous.
Your rant doesn't make sense. Raising the retirement age means younger workers won't have to have their taxes raised to support health 65 year olds who are fit enough to work but want to spend their time golfing or RVing. Why should the young be taxed to death so their elders can spend a third of their lives in retirement?
Your angry response to this question shows that Tierney's premise is right: Social Security has created a greedy, entitlement mentality among older folks - and pitted them against their kids.
Here are two simple problems with raising the retirement age:
1) The burden won't fall on the people who deserve to shoulder it--the folks who will break the system--and the people who will pay most will be the folks who benefit the least, the Boomers' grandkids.
2) The system won't be fixed by this, because a) the Boomers won't be subject to it and b) the pay-in group won't grow as a result. There will still be too many paying in for too few when the Boomers retire en masse. This MIGHT allow a delay, but that's a best-case scenario which allows us to again rollover the debt owed Social Security so Boomers' grandkids can pay it off.
This Chile discussion is a red herring. We don't need to raise the age of social security eligibility to implement a Chilean plan, we need to END social security entirely. This draws a false connection between one and the other.
It depends on what kind of retirement plan you have. The military, cops, firefighters, many kinds of civil servants collect pensions after only 20 years service. Congressman Bill Thomas wants Social Security reform to include physically demanding jobs associated with physical wear and tear on bodies to be taken into considration, IIRC.
"Raising the retirement age means younger workers won't have to have their taxes raised to support health 65 year olds who are fit enough to work but want to spend their time golfing or RVing. Why should the young be taxed to death so their elders can spend a third of their lives in retirement?"
Your scenario and his act like taxes won't be raised. What do you think extra years of paying into Social Security, usually at the peak of earning capacity, are? You think taxes will suddenly get lower if we raise the retirement level? No, they'll just be maintained, at best.
The Boomer dream wherein Gen X and Gen Y pay for Boomer retirement, and the Boomers die having never paid the bills for the Great Society they shoved on us won't happen. Even if the retirement age IS raised.
Politics is the art of the possible. What you recommend is probably impossible, at least at this point in time, unless you want a dem Congress again as a result.
None of the Boomers were old enough to vote for Johnson, and the Great Society programs that he later helped to enact, in 1964. The minimum age for voting was still 21.
I don't argue that it's likely now. But it will happen. Social Security is doomed now or later, and it'd be cheaper if it happened now.
But an action like raising the retirement age serves no point other than to piss Gen X voters and Gen Y voters off. Social Security's solvency gains NOTHING by that. And the party that does it will see the results sooner than they think.
"None of the Boomers were old enough to vote for Johnson, and the Great Society programs that he later helped to enact, in 1964. The minimum age for voting was still 21."
I think that depends on how you define the Boomers. There are plenty of demographers who define the whole 1940-60 range as Boomers, and the 1961-1980 range as Gen X. The birth rate sure took off after 1940, that's for sure. And the Boomers' generational voting record certainly doesn't evidence any interest in making a difference in Social Security beyond guaranteeing they get it and future generations take the hit for it. Regardless, the bill for the Great Society is still being shoved onto Gen X. Just as Gen X is due to be making a family-sized paycheck, most of their income will be taxed away to pay for Medicare and Social Security--as it stands right now, to guarantee those benefits at the level they are rising, there will have to be a tax increase. And the taxed income level will certainly be more middle class, because seniors won't accept the hit and their grandkids won't have the money to contribute much.
Of course, you want to believe that the so-called Greatest Generation is primarily at fault for the Great Society debacle, I won't argue. I just won't have blame heaped onto GenX, which didn't reap the benefits and is going to pay the bills coming due regardless of its degree of culpability for the longevity of these programs.
Ok! Then lets make a collective deal. You know, one that we all agree on. I submit get rid of the original deal and replace it with nothing. How about that? Deal?
Oh ..... no .... I didn't think so.
There never was any deal according to Walter Williams.
Until the sheeple figure it out, we have a problem. The Supreme Court ruled twice that the gov't has no obligation to pay Social Security benefits.
That's just silly (don't mean to be insulting...I'm just laughing). The idea of a person doing the same job all his/her live is so OVER!!!
You just switch careers for what you want at a given point in time. I have. Lots of stay-at-home-moms-going-back-to-the-workplace have.
Maybe you work part-time...maybe you work at Home Depot. Maybe you become a fishing guide. Maybe you drive a Shuttle Express.
There are PLENTY of options!
"I just won't have blame heaped onto GenX, which didn't reap the benefits and is going to pay the bills coming due regardless of its degree of culpability for the longevity of these programs."
Hey, baby boomers have paid into the Social Security system all their lives. This isn't some freebie benefit that wasn't earned. You'll have to pay for years just like we did, into the system. If you can figure out a better way to set it up for Generation X, feel free. But don't go after the Baby Boomers for doing as they were required to do by the SS system. They already raised our benefits age once. So, you too may have to pay more in at some point, just like we did. You aren't exempt, and like heck you'll be paying for just us boomers; others younger than you will be paying for you too one day.
But then, let's just raise the retirement age to 75 or so, so that you can guarantee that we all pay into the system, and barely anyone will get anything out of it, as we will all be dead. Nice system. All pay, no benefit. Raising the taxable cap is the least painful way of solving the problem for a fair amount of years. Yeah, I know, that's taxing the rich. But I must say it's always grated on me that very wealthy people get SS money when they don't have to worry about their retirement days at all. So, if they have to shell out a bit more, so be it. Something has to solve the SS problem, and this is the least painful way. I suspect Bush will come around to this point of view himself. All other ideas to this point are politically unpalatable and won't get backing. His privatization plan is DOA. Costs too much to implement at a time when we are fighting a war against terrorism. Plus, the money we would have to borrow would basically be from the Chinese and other foreign sources. Not a good idea.
And you can recommend until the cows turn blue that the system should be abolished altogether; that's your wishful thinking at work and is a total non-starter, so don't waste your breath. You've got to work on the politically doable, not pie-in-the-sky dreaming of that which will not happen in your lifetime.
Show me some links. If I could have voted, I would have voted for Goldwater in 1964. I couldn't vote for a president until 1972. I think you may have generational issues, but they are not with me or almost all of the "baby boomers" cohort as they are usually defined. Approximately 16.5 million men and women served in the armed forces during the World War II (WW ll) period, September 16, 1940 through July 25, 1947. That's more than one out of ten who were appropriate mates for reproducing were otherwise occupied.
IIRC, the baby boomers are associated with demobilization after World War II until 1964.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.